The Spotted Barbtail (Furnariidae) is poorly studied but shows some extreme traits for a tropical passerine. We located and monitored 155 nests to study this species for 7 years in an Andean cloud forest in Venezuela.

Spotted Barbtails have an unusually long incubation period of 27.2 ± 0.16 days, as a result of very long (3–6 hr) off-bouts even though both adults incubate. The long off-bouts yield low incubation temperatures for embryos and are associated with proportionally large eggs (21% of adult mass). They also have a long nestling period of 21.67 ± 0.33 days, and a typical tropical brood size of two.

The slow growth rate of the typical broods of two is even slower in broods artificially reduced to one young. Nonetheless, the young stay in the nest long enough to achieve wing lengths that approach adult size.

Sea level rise has been studied in terms of its impacts on coastal ecosystems and habitats; but few studies have looked at its effects on mobile marine species, or their use of coastal habitats.

Many ecosystems that are threatened by sea level rise are home to sea turtle nesting sites. There are seven species of sea turtles in the world, four listed as endangered and two listed as vulnerable.

Conservation and research groups are working to preserve and protect the turtle nesting habitats from human encroachment but, a new study says, their efforts are fighting an uphill battle as oceans continue to rise.

While it’s true that sea turtle nesting habitat could disappear in the future, there is a more imminent threat resulting from sea level rise: environmental changes to turtle nests.

The environment of nests has a number of known impacts on reptile eggs and embryo development. Studies have shown that nest temperature influences the sex ratios in new born turtles and high humidity leads to longer incubation times in loggerhead turtles.

But this new study has shown that the sand water content (or moisture) of nests also seems to influence embryonic development. Rising seas, erosion, and an increase in storms are all likely to change the sand water content of nesting sites.

In their study, researchers focused on one species of sea turtle, the leatherback. Compared to other sea turtle species, leatherbacks have lower reproductive success, with successful hatchings averaging only 40 to 50 per cent of the original clutch.

Researchers worked on the Caribbean coast of Colombia where sand samples were taken from two depths at three nesting zones to determine water content.

Turtle hatchings were monitored and recorded, with each hatching representing a successful emergence. Once hatchings stopped, nests were excavated and the remaining eggs were removed. The stage of death of the embryos was determined for each egg.

Overall, the researchers found strong correlations between sand water content and hatching success – increases in moisture led to decreases in hatching. Nests with greater water content yielded fewer turtles.

This could be a major problem for leatherbacks as sea levels continue to rise, especially where nesting sites are also threatened by coastal development. Currently, our oceans are rising about 3.2mm per year, and we are seeing an increase in major storm frequency resulting in coastal erosion.

Suitable habitat is decreasing for many species and if the water content of their nests plays that large a role in the viability of offspring, then turtles are likely to be impacted by this long before their habitat disappears.

However, the researchers feel it is important to keep in mind that animals have the ability to adapt. Turtles may be able to change the structure or permeability of their eggs in order to get around this problem.

The greatest danger is if the environment changes too quickly, they may not have time to adapt.

IN March 2012 two of my colleagues at Aslef, general secretary Mick Whelan and district officer Nigel Gibson, stood at the gates of El Buen Pastor prison in Bogota to applaud the release of Liliany Obando, a human rights activist who had suffered years of wrongful imprisonment.

Earlier this month Obando was back in that same prison. She faced no new charges or accusations. She was guilty of only one thing — social activism. To the Colombian government, this is reason enough to jail her — and thousands like her.

After a six-day hunger strike she has now been sent home and is once again under house arrest.

Obando is a human rights defender, trade unionist, academic and political activist. She was imprisoned between August 2008 and March 2012, accused of links to Farc guerillas.

She was detained for 43 months without a conviction then, after a series of irregularities, she was sentenced to 70 months under house arrest, on charges of rebellion. At the beginning of August 2014 she was taken back to prison even though she had fully complied with the terms of her house arrest.

Obando does not in any way present a danger to society but she continues to be branded a terrorist.

Her only crime is to have remained committed to human rights and the defence of social justice.

She continues to be vocal in her political activism and, in spite of the risk of persecution, to speak out about human rights abuses, particularly against trade unionists.

There are hundreds of political prisoners in Colombia’s prisons, including trade unionists, student activists, community and indigenous leaders, human rights defenders and academics — all imprisoned for their opposition to the Colombian regime.

Most are jailed without trial and in the few cases in which people are convicted they are often charged with “rebellion.”

Whelan, who is also vice-chair of Britain’s Justice for Colombia campaign (JFC), said: “I was sickened to hear that Liliany was back in prison — particularly when leaders of the Colombian paramilitary, responsible for hundreds of deaths and massacres, still enjoy impunity for their crimes.

It is shameful that the judiciary and the media continue to collude to set up political activists.”

Other cases which continue to cause concern include those of Huber Ballesteros and Miguel Angel Beltran.

Ballesteros is an elected member of national executive of Colombia’s largest trade union federation, the CUT, and the national organiser for the social and political movement, the Patriotic March.

He was arrested in August 2013 in the midst of mass industrial action which he was instrumental in leading.

Ballesteros is accused of “rebellion” and the main witness in the case against him is paid by the state and has testified in 35 other cases against social activists.

Dr Miguel Angel Beltran is an academic who was imprisoned between May 2009 and June 2011 before being absolved of the charges of “rebellion” and “criminal conspiracy for terrorist purposes.”

Since his release, even though he was acquitted of the charges against him, the media and government representatives have continued to publicly describe Beltran as a terrorist, resulting in continued death threats against him and a ban from working and teaching as an academic for the next 13 years.

As a regular volunteer for JFC, last month I joined MPs, trade unionists and lawyers from Britain and Ireland on a delegation to hear about the situation directly from human rights activists, community leaders, trade unionists and political representatives.

We heard that the killing of trade unionists continues to be of fundamental concern and intimidation is such that trade union affiliation has [been] reduced to under 3 per cent of the working population.

The resolve and determination of the Colombians in their struggle for justice is inspiring. Many are critical of President Juan Manuel Santos but gave him their support in the elections last month in the hope that he will press ahead with the peace negotiations which began between the Colombian government and the Farc guerillas in 2012.

The agenda of the talks covers the following six points: land and rural development, political participation and guarantees for the political opposition, an end to the violence, resolving the problem of drugs, justice for victims and human rights, and implementation.

Although there is still a long way to go before the negotiations are likely to reach an agreement, the peace talks do offer the possibility for real change.

This is why, as we left the country, the delegation called for a bilateral ceasefire to build trust between the negotiating parties.

This would involve the Colombian government guaranteeing the protection of trade unionists, civil society activists and the political opposition.

While Liliany Obando and her comrades face jail on trumped-up charges, we know talk of democracy and freedom are a sham.

Join Justice for Colombia (JFC) to help them with their work of highlighting the repression, supporting human rights groups and raising awareness within the international community.

USA: DEA CHIEF TO STEP DOWN Michele Leonhart, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, will depart next month. Leonhart had come under fire for failing to sufficiently punish the DEA agents who were involved with the Colombian “sex parties.” [Ryan Reilly, HuffPost]

ProAves, the Rainforest Trust and Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC) have announced the creation of the Chamicero de Perijá Nature Reserve, the first protected area in northern Colombia’s Serranía de Perijá mountain range.

ProAves has acquired 11 adjacent properties that form the 1,850-acre reserve, which protects a pristine cloud forest environment that includes critical habitat for threatened wildlife.

This reserve’s establishment is extremely timely, as 98 per cent of the Serranía de Perijá’s rainforests have already been destroyed due to colonisation and agricultural expansion.

“Without this reserve, the chances are high that within a few years nothing would be left of the spectacular forests that once covered Colombia’s Serranía de Perijá,” said Dr Paul Salaman, CEO of the Rainforest Trust.

There has been a history of difficulties in conducting research in the area, and so the Serranía de Perijá remains one of the least-known natural environments in the Northern Andes.

Field research by ProAves, however, has confirmed its importance as a stronghold for many endemic and rapidly declining species. It has been established as the home of three endangered and endemic species – the Perijá thistletail, Perijá metaltail, and the Perijá brush-finch.

Several other bird species have also been discovered, including a new brush-finch, tapaculo, screech-owl, and spinetail.

“ProAves has been working in the Serranía de Perijá for almost a decade in an effort to protect its last forested areas,” said Luis Felipe Barrera, Director of Conservation for ProAves. “Thanks to our alliance with Rainforest Trust and GWC, we’ve finally achieved a lasting victory for the region’s imperiled wildlife.”

“The new reserve is globally important, as it is recognised as an Alliance for Zero Extinction site. The incredible fauna and flora include many species found nowhere else in the world,” said Dr Wes Sechrest, Chief Scientist and CEO of Global Wildlife Conservation.

The Chamicero de Perijá Nature Reserve also protects two watersheds that are vital for the city of Valledupar and several towns in the otherwise arid Cesar Department.

“This reserve is a win for everyone. Not only is it going to be a permanent lifeline for the region’s many endemic species that have nowhere else to go, but it is also a major victory for nearby cities and towns that will benefit for years from the water it provides,” said Dr Salaman.

Ms Acevedo asked to be shown the same level of sympathy as Mr Harper, who was reinstated as a junior minister five days ago following his resignation in February after it was revealed he had been employing Ms Acevedo illegally.

“He wasn’t criminalised and has been given a second chance,” she said.

Ms Acevedo is concerned that as a high-profile deportee to Colombia she will be a target, especially given her connection to Mr Harper.

One of the reasons she left the country in 2000 with her then five-year-old child was because her father-in-law was kidnapped.

Ms Acevedo applied for indefinite leave to remain in Britain in 2010 but was turned down because her daughter returned to Colombia for a period as a child. She has since appealed against the decision.

Yesterday evening campaign groups and unions protested against her mistreatment outside the Westminster flat that Ms Acevedo used to clean for the Tory MP.

Martha Diaz has survived assassination attempts but continues to lead her Colombian union’s struggle for justice. JOE GILL met her

MARTHA DIAZ was walking to work at 5.30am in Bucaramanga, north-east Colombia, on August 15 2006 when a car pulled up next to her.

What happened next is etched in her memory forever. With all her experience of death threats as a trade union and political organiser since her youth, she was not prepared for what followed.

“They showed me a picture of my daughter Tania and they said they had her. They tricked me into getting into the car. They beat me, blindfolded me and took me to an abandoned place. They showed me photographs of my colleagues so that I would denounce them as guerillas. They said they had photos of me talking to guerillas.”

“One of them started laughing on the mobile phone, saying that they had just killed my daughter,” Diaz recalls. “I went crazy — I tried to scratch him and hit him — then they shot me twice and left me for dead.”

Some peasants found Martha near a farm and helped her get to hospital. “The peasants said it was a miracle I was alive. The place they found me was where the paramilitaries were dumping bodies every day.”

Two years after this horrific experience she narrowly escaped a second kidnapping attempt.

Then in 2010, her youngest daughter was also seized. She was sexually harassed and tortured psychologically, driven around an abandoned lot and taunted that her mother was a guerilla and an enemy of the state. Her kidnappers released her after four hours.

“As president of my union, I have lost count of the number of death threats I have received. There are 53 cases lodged in my name with the attorney general’s office.”

When Diaz was kidnapped, she managed to memorise the number plate of her attackers’ car. It was later identified as belonging to the wife of a serving army officer, who later became a general. However, no charges have ever been brought against him or anyone else in any of the cases relating to her. According to Diaz, “The investigator said the discovery of the number plate didn’t implicate him because it belonged to his wife.”

Death threats from the paramilitaries come in the form of notes and letters, or wreaths announcing the target’s death. On one occasion Diaz found two dolls chopped in pieces and covered in red paint with the names of her two daughters pinned to their heads.

With the kidnapping and attempted murder, kidnapping of her daughter and the countless death threats she and her daughters have received it would be no surprise if Diaz had decided to cease her political activities. But she has stood her ground. “No,” she says, “I never felt I would run away. I received a lot of support from the people around me. There is a strong support system within the union and from the human rights organisations. We always support each other. My daughters might cry and suffer but they support me and they are engaged in this process.”

The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights ordered the Colombian state to provide Diaz and her daughters with protection measures. The state has provided her with a bullet-proof jeep and bodyguards — although she can’t pick her own trusted people. In the case of her daughters, the state still hasn’t complied with the order.

Diaz works in the Bucaramanga mayor’s office where she helped launch a union in the 1990s. As a teenager she was inspired by a communist teacher to join the Colombian Communist Party and later to become a member of the Patriotic Union — a left-wing political party that was effectively destroyed in a political genocide against its members and candidates in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

She went on to become a union activist, helping found the ASTDEMP union of which she is now president. “It took us four years to create the union in Santander, because the Ministry of Labour would not recognise it. We achieved this in 1998.”

Such activities have inevitably made Diaz and other union activists the target of both the municipal employers and right-wing terror groups who have infiltrated local municipalities and regional institutions.

“In the case of my union we have always had to protect ourselves. In 2007, the whole executive was fired along with 300 other members.”

The executive members only got their jobs back a year later when a tribunal ruled that the sackings were illegal and ordered their reinstatement.

“As a union we saw the phenomenon of paramilitary infiltration was growing stronger. Local authorities were contracting out services to paramilitaries in exchange for votes — by forcing peasants to vote for certain candidates at the point of a gun.

“We made it official policy to monitor the budget to check that it wasn’t misspent by paramilitaries, to denounce corruption and expose it. We managed to get some of the mayors imprisoned with the help of independent prosecutors, and we won tribunals for members who had lost their jobs.”

“As a result we were accused of being guerillas, suffered death threats and the assassinations of our members. Our members are in danger because we have been declared military targets by various paramilitary groups such as the Black Eagles and others.”

The practice of denouncing union and social movement activists as guerillas is a longstanding strategy to intimidate and silence opposition to the government in Colombia.

Despite an official demobilisation of the AUC paramilitary group in 2005, the same forces have reorganised under different names. However, the government refers to these groups as “criminal gangs” — a deceptive description that obscures the fact that state collusion with the paramilitaries continues.

In one notorious case among many, a member of Diaz’s union, Carlos Arsinegas, denounced the strong alliance between the mayor, paramilitaries and the companies producing African palm oil in Puerto Wilches municipality. “He got a lot of publicity for this and the paramilitaries targeted him, so he had to get out.” Because of the high profile of the case, the police were forced to help him relocate. He was displaced for two years, but in the absence of legislation to protect workers who have been displaced, he had no material support.

“We don’t have the resources to help them,” explains Diaz. “So he returned. He was found dead, tortured, his nails and eyes out, burnt alive.”

The media has often portrayed the violence in Colombia as a thing of the past, but this is very far from the truth. Last year 78 human rights defenders and 27 trade unionists were killed, according to Justice for Colombia. As ever, the slaughter of democrats in Colombia does not break the mainstream media narrative that the country is progressing.

Diaz is also an executive member of the Patriotic March, a new mass movement in Colombia that is fighting for peace, social justice and a new progressive constitution for the country. “We are a social and political movement including unions, organisations of the left, peasant organisations, well-known personalities in the peace process and survivors of the Patriotic Union genocide.”

Colombia’s right-wing President Santos has just been re-elected, in part thanks to left-wing voters who wanted to ensure the continuation of the two-year-old peace process still underway in Havana between the government and the Farc guerilla movement. Santos’s right-wing opponent Oscar Ivan Zuluaga wanted an end to the talks, but was defeated in a second round of voting.

“Eventually we want to take part in the political process,” says Diaz of the Patriotic March’s future trajectory. Some of the movement’s key demands are for a constituent assembly, for the mass participation of civil society organisations in the peace process and ultimately for a “second definitive independence for Colombia.”

Last year the movement mobilised one million people on the streets of the country and led the biggest wave of industrial action seen in Colombia for 20 years, during which 19 activists were murdered.

It is planning mass demonstrations in August in support of peace, social justice and electoral reform. The movement already has many martyrs, including over 50 activists killed and hundreds imprisoned. “We defend and support the peace process but for us it is much more than the demobilisation of Farc,” says Diaz. “All that money that goes into war must be invested in society.”

As one delegate at a packed session of the Unison conference last week said in the presence of Diaz on the platform, “She doesn’t want our pity, she wants our solidarity. As trade unionists we owe it to our comrades in Colombia to give it to them.”

Diaz was visibly moved by the show of solidarity, returning home strengthened by the knowledge that Colombians are not alone in their long struggle for peace and justice.